The Places of the Soul

“Silence, in silence.”

“If only I could show you the second Helicon which for you and the Muses I set up in the Euganean Hills! I really think you will not ever want to leave from there” (F. Petrarca)

The Euganean Hills do not need crowds of hurried tourists, but people who love this land, because a lover will feel the wish to come back and immerse him/herself in this beloved place. Over the centuries, a number of poets and writers have felt the charm of these enchanting places and have enhanced its charm. The most important and known is Francesco Petrarca, who stayed here between 1369 and 1374, when he died. A few academics think that several passages of the “Canzoniere” are inspired by the hilly landscape of the Euganean Hills.

The beauty of this land also inspired Ugo Foscolo, who represented it in several passages of his “Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis.” Percy Bysshe Shelley, one of the greatest English poets composed “Julian and Maddalo” (1818) and Prometheus Unbound (1820) during his stay at the Villa Cappuccini in Este, with the Euganean Hills in the background. More recently, writers such as Dino Buzzati, Antonio Fogazzaro, Gabriele D’Annunzio and then Giorgio Bassani, the author of the “Giardino dei Finzi Contini” told the gentle and sensual beauty of these places.